


When it rains it pours

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Best Friends, Bill Denbrough Stutters, Brownies, Drinking to Cope, Emotional Baggage, Families of Choice, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Drinking, Post-Divorce, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Sad Bill Denbrough, Team as Family, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22158337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: It's been 27 years since Georgie died, and Bill mourns him like he always does, but this the first time he's been in Derry when the anniversary rolls around, and this year, he's got friends who won't see him alone on a night like this if they can help it. And they're the Loser's Club- of course they can help it. Losers always stick together. It's what they do.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough & Georgie Denbrough, Bill Denbrough & The Losers Club
Comments: 12
Kudos: 26





	When it rains it pours

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, you guys, please don't come here expecting this to be a good fic- I've never watched It (I'm not good with horror) and I don't know anything about the plot but the boy in the yellow raincoat, but I watched a few scenes on youtube and saw a lot of Tumblr and I got HOOKED on the Losers Club's relationship, but when I went to search for content on AO3, I was horrified that there is like... no content... at all... for poor Bill??? Whom I love??? So I decided to slowly fix that with my limited/non-existent knowledge of It canon, so if this is weird or doesn't follow the plot of the movie to a T, then I'm very sorry, but I swear I tried my best. Also, the only background I have with a stuttering character is Diego from the Umbrella Academy, and Bill stutters MUCH more than Diego does, so I tried to be sensitive but also tried to include an important part of the character. ANYWAY, enjoy this steaming pile of shit and I hope you end up enjoying it (sorry in advance).

It’s mid-October, 2016, and it’s 27 years since the day that Gorgie died.

Bill decided that he'd return to it from LA after the most recent defeat of Pennywise- he was tired, and it was cold, and instead of renting a hotel room for the night, he returned to his old home and stayed in his old room. He had gotten drunk one night and decided to buy the property on a whim, so it was still his house, exactly as he had left it. Well, almost exactly.

But it was the first time in 27 years that Bill had celebrated- not that there was much celebration. Endured? That worked better- the death of his little brother in Derry.

The previous owners sold the house and left Derry once their little boy had died- eaten by Pennywise in the house of mirrors, Bill knew- so he was able to recreate his childhood home from the things his parents left in the cellar when they moved away. All of Georgie’s things that they couldn’t bear to take with them. He had converted his father's old office into a study of his own, a new map of Derry pinned to the back wall, and had brought a blow-up mattress to replace his old bed, but Georgie’s room was something he had to fix, and he put all his things back in it until it was exactly as he remembered it, minus Georgie on the bed and his yellow raincoat in the wardrobe. He had only gone in there to replace the room that until recently belonged to a strangers son with Georgie’s things sitting in the basement collecting dust before shutting the door and locking it and never going into that room again.

On his writing desk sat the old crumpled paper boat that he had pulled from the sewers, water-logged and stained with god knows what, the colour faded, the ink nothing now but a dark blotch on the heavy paper. He had no idea how he had it, sitting on his desk, staring him in the face like a dark memory. Realistically, he knew that it shouldn’t have lasted this long- 27 years is a long time for anything to survive, especially some paper that had found a home in a storm drain. Maybe it wasn’t the real thing, and the clown had only made it to trick Bill into falling deeper in his trap? Maybe Pennywise had kept it, as a sadistic memento of his first taste of child flesh, of Georgie, of the boy that was supposed to be Bill but wasn’t because he was too selfish to be there for his brother when he needed him most, when _Georgie-_

He bit his lip, and pulled his gaze away from the old paper boat and back to his laptop, where his latest novel was slowly but surely coming together. This one, he vowed, he’d never allow anyone to adapt into a movie. That way, he could write his own ending, and nobody could tell him that his books were shit. He was very proud of his books, thank you very much, and the only way for him to continue making more was for him not to hear any critique- he wasn’t sure he could take it.

Don’t get him wrong- he always tries to write his novels, and usually, he gets it done relatively well, especially when he puts his mind to it, but this… this was a bad day.

Mid-October every year, it takes all his effort not to crawl up and hid away from the rest of the world in some dark corner of the universe. It didn’t help that on most anniversaries, it rained, and Bill didn’t deal with storms very well. They reminded him too much of yellow raincoats and red balloons and thick paper boats and too-much blood slick across the sidewalk.

It was different with Audra. She didn’t let him think about it- there was always too much to do, another book to write, a screen-play to fix, an errand to run, something important to do other than thinking about his little brother that was murdered. As he thought about Audra, his eyes drifted to the gold band sitting at the far edge of his table, and he couldn’t help but think that his finger felt startlingly naked without it. But Audra was gone now, and Bill was free to think about his pain as much as he wanted. Not that he really wanted to think about it at all.

There was a bright flash from outside his window, and Bill snapped his eyes over to it just in case, just in case they failed and he was back again, back again and again and again, but then the loud boom of the thunder that seemed to shake the very foundations of his childhood home reaffirmed that it was just a storm that had rolled in, and then he was on edge and afraid for a very different reason than the clown.

"Fuck," Bill muttered to himself as he ran a heavy hand down his tired face and reached across his desk for the bottle of whisky that was mostly empty by now. He'd had a long night, and sure, maybe he shouldn't be writing his newest novel drunk off his tits, but he came up with all his best material when he was a couple of glasses in. And maybe this time nobody would complain about the stupid fucking ending. 

He watched the amber liquor slowly trickle into the glass and slosh along the sides. The ice had melted long ago. There was another flash of lightning, another crack of thunder, and he contemplated for a moment taking a swig from the bottle, but thought better of it.

Derry had never been kind to Bill. First, there were the bullies, then his parents were always busy, and then the clown rose from the sewers for the first time and dragged poor innocent Georgie straight into the depths of hell, then Eddie had followed him 27 years later, and now Bill was all alone again, and he hated himself just as much as he did mid-October 1988, except now he was a little drunker and a little more wealthy. 

But this was the first of Georgie's anniversaries that Bill bad celebrated in Derry, and this year, he wasn't going to endure it alone.

There was a heavy rap on the door, and at first, Bill didn’t hear it, too enraptured in his drink and his book and his thoughts, but then it sounded again, this time louder and more insistent, and Bill stood from his chair with a grumble and made his way around the desk to the front door. “Who the fuck- what do you- oh.”

He paused because when he threw open the door with a permanent frown on his face, he was met by the sight of Ben and Bev standing on his doorstep, Ben holding an umbrella above his head to shield them both from the rain and Bev holding a tray out in front of her. It seemed to be steaming. “Suprise!” Bev said with a smile and Ben waved from behind her.

“W-what the fuck are you two doing here?” Bill frowned but moved aside so they could enter. “Come in. It’s raining. You’ll catch a c-cold.”

They entered the house and wiped their feet on the old welcome mat before walking deeper inside. “Where can I put this down?” Bev asked, raising the foil-covered tray. “It’s hot. And heavy.”

“What is it?” Bill frowned.

“Brownies.” She replied. “Is the kitchen good?”

“Uh- yeah, yeah.” Bill took the tray from her and lead them both into the kitchen. He put the heavy and very warm tray onto the counter before wiping his hands on his pants. “Do you want anything to drink?”

"No thanks," Bev smiled as she took off her gloves and ran her fingers through her frizzy red locks, and somehow, after all this time, that smile still managed to calm Bill’s nerves, if only for a little while. “Bad night?”

Bill blinked and took a step back away from the counter and the sweet smell of chocolaty goodness wafting thickly through the air. “Does it show on my f-face?” he found himself muttering as he fixed his shirt and smoothed down his hair. He’d been staring at himself in the mirror for most of the morning, and tried very hard to ignore the imaginary image of Pennywise laughing at him just over his shoulder- he’d tried very hard to look nice. For Georgie, that’s all.

A sad look crossed Bev’s face for a moment before it was gone quicker than it arrived, and she stepped forward to adjust Bill’s collar and to re-button his shirt. He hadn’t even known that he’d gotten some of the buttons wrong in his rush this morning. “Of course not,” she said. “But it’s raining, and I know how much you hate storms. And I know how bad this day usually is for you.”

She gently patted his shoulders with her manicured nails glittering in the darkness and stepped away from him. “Is that why the two of you are here? In Derry?” he asked. “Because I’m only here for a little while, so unless this is a coincidence and you just so happened to be here at the same time with a tray of brownies…”

Bev shrugged. “Mike said that you’re down here every October. We thought that this year we could surprise you.”

“Yeah, of course,” Bill muttered as he turned away from Bev and began to rummage around in the fridge again. “Because I really needed to be surprised on the day of my brother’s death.”

Bill didn’t turn around, but he heard Bev’s sigh loud in his ears, and he winced. “Come out Bill, let’s not leave Ben waiting.”

He didn’t answer, but he knew that she was right, so Bill grabbed one of the remaining beers from the fridge and closed it with his hip as he followed Bev out of the kitchen and back into the lounge where the fireplace was roaring to try and beat away the chill and the door to his ‘study’ was opened, and Ben was in there, running his nail over the carving in the wood. “Someone’s been busy,” he said quietly.

As Bev and Bill joined him in the darkened study, Bill belatedly realized that Ben had found the words he had carved into the wood of his parent’s old second-hand desk with a butter knife, _‘you lied, I died’_ , a very complicated series of words to carve into wood with a dull blade, but Bill had been determined, and wanted to remember his mistakes for the rest of his days. “Ah, I’d forgotten about that,” Bill admitted as Ben and Beverly both turned to look at him, but he didn’t catch their expression as he moved up to the desk and ran his fingers over the words in a much more tender way than Ben. “I was probably drunk at the time.”

He didn’t miss the way Ben’s eyes darted to the mostly empty bottle of whisky and the glass of amber liquid and melted ice, but Bill pretended as if he did. ‘Right,” Ben said quietly and accepted the beer that Bill thrust into his hands. “Getting drunk a lot then, lately?”

“You know me, Ben,” Bill said with a small grin as he closed his laptop, sure that he wasn’t going to get much more work done now that he had guests over that didn’t seem intent on leaving. “I get my best work done drunk. More productive too. Now, quick question, uh, what the fuck are you planning? Because I know you, both of you, and I know that this wasn’t a last-minute thing.”

Both of them ignored him, and Beverly picked up the soiled paper boat while Ben continued to look at him sadly. “What does, ‘You lied, I died’ mean? And how the fuck did you get the boat back?”

Bill felt an unsavoury urge to slap Beverly’s hands away from Georgie’s precious paper boat, but he settled for ripping it from her grasp instead and gently smoothed it back out. “Pennywise gave it back to me. I don’t know why. But I went to that d-drainage pipe and I asked him why he took G-Georgie and he… he just gave it back. I don’t know why. But it’s exactly the same.”

“I wouldn’t be taking anything from that clown,” Ben frowned.

“I know, but it’s Georgie,” Bill shrugged as he turned away. He slipped his wedding band off of the table and into his pocket while he could and placed the boat back on the desk. “And the clown's dead, so it doesn’t really matter where or who I got it from.”

But Bev was still stuck a little bit in the past. “Wait, Bill, why did you carve, 'You lied, I died' into your desk? What does it mean?”

“Nothing,” Bill waved her off. “Just a reminder, that’s all.”

There was another knock on the door and Bill went to answer it, dreading who he would be met with, but it was only Mike, wearing his customary disarming smile with a stack of books under one arm and a bag dangling from his fingers. “Hey Bill,” Mike grinned. “Mind if I come in? All this is pretty heavy.”

Confused, Bill stepped aside and Mike shuffled into his house, wiping the rain on the mat so he didn’t tread mud all though his home, and made his way to the kitchen. Bill dumbly followed after him. “I brought you some books from the library that I thought you might like, and also a couple of bottles of wine, and a box of chocolates.”

“I’m never one to refuse books, chocolate or alcohol, but would someone like to explain to me what on earth is going on here?” Bill said aloud as he watched Mike deposit his load of things in the kitchen and help himself to a cold beer from the fridge. 

“Oh, are the other’s here already?” Mike asked as he pushed past Bill and found his own way to the study where Ben and Bev were talking amongst themselves as quietly as they could. "Hey, guys! You got here earlier than I thought, I was planning on picking you up from the airport..."

Bill was just about to follow when there was another, more tentative knock at the door, and when he threw it open, slightly frustrated now with all the sudden interruptions. But it was Richie, who carried no gifts unlike the others and who also looked like he didn’t want to be there, but his glasses were clean and though his cheeks and nose were red from the cold, it didn’t look like he’d been crying recently, and Bill knew that he’d been crying a lot. “Oh- Rich, are you alright?”

“Happy death day,” Rich said lowly before also entering the house, not even bothering to wipe the water off his feet as he passed over the mat and instead tread dirty water all over the wooden floors.

Blinking, Bill rushed to grab the last beer from the fridge before he hurried into the study again, where four people had apparently taken up shop. “OK, what the fuck is going on here?”

There was a twinkle in Mike’s eye as he watched Bill over the neck of his bottle. “We’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“The brownies are probably cooled by now,” Bev said. “I didn’t just bring them to sit pretty on the counter.”

Richie’s mood improved dramatically at the mention of food. “Oh, brownies, now you’re talking.”

Ben nodded to the mostly empty bottle of whiskey on the desk and gestured to the rest of the room. “Would anyone else like another drink? You seem to be covered for the night Big Bill, but Richie? Bev? Mike? Would you like me to get you something?”

“Alright, s-stop it, that’s enough,” Bill finally snapped and the room went silent. “Stop changing the subject. You're trying to distract me with alcohol and brownies. This isn’t a coincidence. What the hell are you all doing here?”

The mood changed drastically and everyone fell silent. Bill looked at them each in turn, expectantly waiting for someone to give him some answers, and of course, it was Bev, sweet Bev who would burn down the world just for fun but would build you back up piece-by-ruined-piece if she had the chance. “Bill,” her voice was as soft as the look in her eyes, like a warm blanket by the fireplace on a cold winter's night, and Bill wanted to run away from it as fast as possible. That kindness couldn’t mean anything good. “We know- well. We know how bad this time of year gets for you, and we know how bad you deal with it, and so we thought that while we were in the neighbourhood, we would stop by and just… see how you were going. That's all.”

As Bev spoke, Bill found himself predicting the words before she said them and with a groan he bent over to brace himself on the edge of his desk and shut his eyes tight. “Look, Bill,” Ben said as he tentatively ran a hand soothingly over Bill’s arched back. “We just wanted to make sure that you weren’t alone for this… occasion. We know how hard it is.”

“Right,” Bill hated how bitter his voice sounded to his own ears. "So you all randomly decided to take a trip down to little old Derry to visit poor old Bill all at the same time and for the same reason? This wasn't planned at all?"

There was a long pause. "There was a little bit of planning," Mike admitted.

Groaning, Bill squeezed his eyes shut and lowered himself further onto the table so that his elbows were bracing him on the wood and he could thread his fingers through his hair and tug. "Guys," he sighed, feeling his very soul exit his body from that one exhale. "You really didn't have to go through all this trouble just for me. I'm f- _fine_. You're all worried about me for nothing."

"Are you? Fine?" Ben interjected and his voice was too soft and too kind and too gentle in the starting silence. "How long did it take you to finish that bottle of whisky today? How many drinks have you had since you arrived back in Derry late September? How many times have you stopped what you're doing to cry because you're starting to remember again? How many times did you find yourself thinking about Georgie today? When was the last time you got a good night's sleep?"

Bill shrugged and chose only one of those questions that he felt was worth answering. "When did my last book come out?"

It was a rhetorical question that he hadn't expected anyone to have an answer for, but Mike surprised them all by saying, "12 of March 2013," he shrugged nonchalantly when all eyes turned to him. "What? I lived in a library. I was surrounded by books all the time. You don't think I searched out Bill's books whenever a new one was coming out?"

Despite the circumstances, that surprised a chuckle out of Bill. "Then to answer your question, Ben, my last good night's sleep was 13 of March 2013 because that was the final day that I had to worry about that damn book. Wow, 2013? I've got to get a move on."

Ben looked upset, but he didn't mention it. "We know that you think that you're fine, but you obviously don't see what we see," he said as he gestured vaguely in Bill's direction. "You look like shit man,"

"Yeah," Richie tried for a joke. "More so than normal."

Bill's hands clenched again and his fingers pulled painfully tightly at his hair. "What the fuck are you doing here, Richie?"

There was a pause. "What?" Richie demanded. "You don't want me here? I can go, believe me, I've got better things to do. Fuck me I guess."

For a long moment, all Bill could do was sigh and reminisce about a time when all his friends weren't so dense, but he rose himself up on his elbows slightly and pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand. "Don't be stupid. I'm always glad to have you here. But what are you doing _here,_ in _Derry_ in the house I grew up in, trying to make _me_ feel better when Eddie died a month and a half ago?"

The sudden silence was longer this time, broken only by Bev's sharp gasp when it started and Ben clearing his throat when it dragged on too long. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Richie said, but his voice was quieter and didn't quite have the bite that he was used to.

"What I mean is, why are you here trying to make me feel better about something that happened 27 years ago when someone very close to you died 40 days ago and I'm the one who should be making you feel better?" There was no answer, and Bill shut his eyes again. "How the tables have turned."

"Bill, listen," Richie said, and his voice was so much softer than they had ever heard it. Bill actually felt a little bad. "I'm sorry I started that fight with you about searching for Georgie back when we were kids. I was just scared and angry and some of us had already gotten hurt, and I didn't want to lose anyone else."

"Well, if we're all about apologising now, I'm sorry for punching you in the face," Bill replied and Mike stifled a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snorting-laugh.

"I deserved it," Richie said. "I shouldn't have used Georgie against you. That was a low blow. I just wanted to hurt you back for hurting Eds- for hurting us."

Bill was kind enough not to mention the slip-up, and so was everyone else. "You did deserve it, that's true, but I should have stopped trying to drag all of you back into that house to find the well. I knew deep down that it was a fool's errand. I just needed to keep looking."

“We understand,” Bev said, moving closer. “You wanted closure.”

Snorting, Bill reached for his glass. “Fuck closure. I wanted my brother back, safe and alive. I couldn’t give a fuck about closure.” He looked to the edge of the desk with a glare as his fingers refused to close around the smooth surface of the cool glass, but he caught a glint out of the corner of his eye and watched Beverly already backing away slowly, his glass in her hand. He watched her for a few long moments before he reached for the bottle instead and took a swig out of that. She watched him with a pained expression. “None of you has to be here, you know. Especially not you, Trashmouth. You’ve all got better things to do.”

There was a clap of thunder from outside, further away now but still startlingly loud, and Bill winced involuntarily and his grip tightened on the neck of the bottle. Ben watched him carefully. “We wouldn’t have come if we didn’t want to spend time with you.”

Richie shrugged. “Maybe, but I’d much rather be here with you chucklefucks than in my apartment or in a hotel somewhere.”

Unbeknownst by Bill, Mike had wandered over to the chest of drawers that sat in the far side of the room and had unfolded the crinkled piece of paper that sat beside his wallet. “What’s this, Bill?” He turned it slowly to reveal the police sketch of Georgie that was drawn the day he disappeared before everyone in Derry gave up the search and decided he was dead. Bill had described him to the artist himself, and the likeliness was almost uncanny if you ignored the slightly bulbous nose, the thin upper lip and the wonky left eye. Mike’s face fell when he realized what it was. “Oh. Why do you still have this?”

Shrugging, Bill walked over and took it from him with his free hand. “It’s been in my wallet for years and I only found it recently. I was going to have it framed. As an m-memory.”

“A memory,” Bev said. “Like this sentence carved into your desk and you buying your childhood home as a holiday house?”

“Yes,” Bill said as he folded the police drawing and shoved it impatiently yet carefully into his pocket. “Exactly like that.”

There was a pause as Bill finished off the bottle and thunder raged in the distance, but he didn’t react with his lips clamped around the bottle of whisky. Bev had her eyes closed and Ben was watching him with sad eyes and Mike was looking away at anything else, but Richie, as he always did, broke the tense, ugly silence. “Well this is super fucking morbid,” he said, clapping his hands and rocking back and forth on his heels. “Bev, you said something about brownies?”

“Uh, yeah,” Bev said weakly as she snapped herself out of the funk that Bill had put her in and tore her eyes away. “I baked a tray. They’re probably cooled by now. I’ll cut some up."

Richie and Mike followed her out of the room and into the kitchen, but Ben stayed back and watched Bill for a little longer. Bill waited in acknowledgment. “Bill,” Ben said eventually, voice low, eyes full of untouched emotion that Bill couldn’t stand to look at. “Are you sure you’re alright? I mean, really alright? It’s just us here now. You and me. You know you can tell me anything.”

“Yeah, Benny,” Bill managed a small smile that he hoped didn’t come off as too fake. “I’m just p-peachy. Let’s go get some brownies?”

“Sure,” Ben said slowly and walked towards the door, but extended his hand to Bill before he got too far. “Come with me? But… without the bottle?”

Bill could think of nothing worse, but with a sigh that he could feel deep within his soul, he put the bottle back down on the desk- it was mostly empty anyway- and took Ben’s hand. “You guys really, really didn’t need to c-come. I can deal with it on my o-own.”

“I know,” Ben said as he led them both out of the study and into the kitchen where the others were laughing and talking amongst themselves and getting a headstart on eating the fresh-baked brownies. “But it’s always better to deal with it surrounded by friends, isn’t it?”

As he was dragged out, Bill decided that he would be the judge of that, but as another thunderclap boomed overhead and lightning flashed outside the window and rain pelted on the roof, he decided that he would be the judge of Bev’s brownies before he judged the best way to mourn.


End file.
